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The Geological Society offers grades of membership for every stage of your career, from student to retirement. Find out about the benefits of membership, and how we can help you achieve and maintain Chartered status.

Information about the Geological Society’s internationally acclaimed books and journals for authors, editors, librarians and readers. Order publications, find out about the Lyell Collection and read guidelines for preparing a paper or submitting a book proposal.

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Geoscientist is the Fellowship magazine of the Geological Society: with news about science, people, the Society, features, reviews, opinion, letters and forthcoming events. All this, and more, can be found sooner here, in our online version.

The Geological Society of London is the UK national society for geoscience, providing support to over 10,000 members in the UK and overseas. Founded in 1807, we are the oldest geological society in the world.

Obituary policy

All current Fellows of the Society are entitled to an obituary, which will be published online and carried in print in the earliest available copy of Geoscientist. Fellows whose membership has lapsed since 1985 are similarly entitled. Fellows whose membership lapsed before 1985 will not normally be considered for an obituary.

Guidelines for Authors

Before 2010, Obituaries were published online and printed together in the Annual Report/Review covering the year of decease. However from 2010 (which is to say, the Annual Review 2009, published May 2010) this practice was changed to allow more timely print publication.

We therefore no longer issue deadlines to obituarists.

Getting commissioned

We do not accept unsolicited obituaries. If you wish to write an obituary, please contact Ted Nield to be commissioned first. Guidelines for the writing of Society obits are given below.

Submission

Wordage & Picture

The Society does not print long obituaries. The printed obituary must be exactly 500 words in length. We can publish longer obituaries online. If you also wish to submit a longer obituary for online use, please do so alongside your 500-word obit for print. However, please try not to exceed 1000 words.

Please obtain and submit a photograph of the deceased. B&W prints (postcard size or larger) or colour transparencies are preferred, though colour prints may be acceptable. Photo-booth pictures are discouraged. If you submit a digital picture by email, please use JPEG format and scan at the highest resolution available to you. We require a minimum of 300dpi for publication. As a rule of thumb, if your scan is larger than 250 kilobytes, it is likely to be acceptable. If it is less than 100kb, it is probably too small.

Names

Please use the online obituaries on this website as your style guide. Give the deceased's full name (without titles, pre- or postnominals) and dates in your headline. As far as possible, do not use initials anywhere in your piece. All persons mentioned should be named with their most familiarly used first name. The only exception should be characters only known to most readers by their initials (e.g. Professor O.T. Jones).

General

The obituary should contain the subject’s full name and full dates. Here, ideally at first mention, you may also include titles, and pre- and post-nominals. Pre-university life and education is not considered essential information, nor are details of parentage, birthplace, siblings etc. Please mention scholarships/honours/prizes.

Please give as much information as possible on the subject’s career, contribution to the science, and work for the Society. Please include names of partner or partners, marriages where appropriate and any children. Please state the cause of death, if known, unless this runs counter to the expressed wishes of the bereaved.

A Society obituary is not the place for critical comment upon the deceased. De mortuis nil nisi bonum will be our guiding principle.